


Do Not A Prison Make

by emeraldarrows



Category: The Waltons
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Childhood Memories, Drama, Extended Scene, Gen, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-21 00:03:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9521870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldarrows/pseuds/emeraldarrows
Summary: As days pass and Ben waits out the war in a POW camp he finds his memories are his only form of escape.





	

_"It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time." - Barbara Kingsolver_

If he closes his eyes and thinks hard enough he can bring it all to life.

It isn't a guard standing in front of them, gun in hand, but Grandpa, with a fishing rod and a twinkle in his eyes, motioning for him to join him down at the pond. He knows, deep inside, that Grandpa is gone now, has been for quite some time, but he can still see him and it seems like just yesterday he caught the mess of trout. Seconds, please?

Perhaps it's not a barbed wire fence glistening like a row of daggers beneath the sun, shimmering in the heat with a cruel beauty, but rather the white pillars of the front porch, and if he closes his eyes tightly he can see a rocking chair and Grandma sitting there, snapping peas as she watches Elizabeth play on the tire swing. He hears the laughter of the other children and he's young again, running among them, barefooted, hair a flame in the warmth of the sun.

It isn't hard, sun-baked ground beneath his feet, but sawdust shavings, curling like tiny fingers between his bare toes, playing like little children in the dust. Daddy takes his hands and places them on the board, showing him how to hold it and feed it to the saw, and he watches, eyes wide, as the board is severed in a clean and straight line. It's the first thing he's ever made and he's so proud that he has to show everyone. Mama brushes a lock of hair off his forehead and kisses him there, a smile touched with joy and a faint sadness. My little boy is all grown up.

It isn't a meager plate of rice that hardly fills the hunger but one of Mama's pies - apple, he can smell the rich scent drifting like perfume through the house - warm from the oven as she trims the crust on the next one. He reaches out, snatching a bit of the dough and popping it into his mouth. Ben Walton! You'll spoil your supper! But it tastes too good to resist and he eats until he's got the granddaddy of a stomach ache and is much too sick to enjoy a real slice of it.

His eyes burn beneath the violent siege of the tropical sun, yellow smearing across the ground, searing his mind. Only it isn't the sun it's Cindy's hair, spilled like liquid gold across the pillow as she opens her eyes and smiles up at him, love shining in her eyes as another morning dawns, the sunrise matching her hair. He carries their baby to the bed, the child they created out of that love, and he sits down with them, tasting her kiss, heart filled until he thinks it will burst. He loves them.

He turns the moans of the other men and the screams of the jungle into the remembrance of hushed voices Goodnight, Ben and giggles from the girls' room as they whisper about movie stars. He's so handsome! The boys throw pillows at the wall until Mary Ellen and Erin stop talking and lapse into giggles. Girls!

When it's pitch black at night and he's curled in a ball on the floor next to a sick man - dying, won't live until morning - and it's so hot his filthy clothes cling to his damp body, he can hear the soft sound of breathing all around him, the comfortable safe feel of his brothers sleeping. He's home again, with his family.

And if he imagines hard enough, he can convince himself that the war will be over soon hours, days, weeks and he'll be back home, that it will all be true and not just memories, and that he'll survive all this.

Then his eyes open and he stares out, through the guard and the barbed wire, past the sweat box and the hastily dug graves, and he remembers that there's a war out there, changing everything he knows.

And he wonders if home is still the same as when he left it or if anything will be the way he remembers.


End file.
